When she was not busy with some domestic duties, Nora was out in some nook remote from the cabin devouring the contents of a book. She was an apt scholar and learned rapidly. She would say "ye" only when speaking in great haste; other times she said "you." In one book that she read the heroine was a country girl like herself, and would say "hit" and "ye" like she did, and she discovered in reading that she was not properly educated as to the use of language, therefore she applied herself the harder. She took special delight in this book, and read it the second time, being greatly pleased with the sweet little character, the country girl, who, before the novel closed, went off to college in the big city and, after a few years study, came home refined in manners and neat in dress. This same country girl was ever afterward her own model, because she became gentle and kind, and married the millionaire's son, to the satisfaction of all concerned. Jack Wade was in her mind's eye the very hero himself. She thought of him as a big-hearted, generously kind boy, whose sole hope was to benefit someone else, though he might be personally affected by so doing. She thought of him as a great wise man who was spending his life out in the mountains for her special benefit. She thought of him by day, and when night came on, the hideous night of darkness, when her awakened soul longed for light, she thought of him. When her body passed into the oblivion of peaceful slumber she dreamed of him, of the man who had done so much toward enlightening her mind and soul, who had brought her out of the darkness and set her upon a high pinnacle of knowledge, where light shone in on her benighted being and she saw. He had spoken to her of God, a great God, Maker of the mighty universe, as no one had ever before spoken to her. The light shone brighter from his eyes as he talked to her about things of which she had hitherto known nothing. The song of the little bird in the tree top, the little wild bird, sounded sweeter than it was wont in times past. Their notes came clearer and had a new meaning. Her darkened soul opened wide its closed windows and the light came streaming in until she saw through different eyes. Her interest in the wild, golden-headed flowers that grew in great profusion along the ridge of the mountain grew day by day, until she felt she must plant a garden of her own somewhere near the cabin, so that she could go out and work among the flowers and talk with them. Her very soul yearned for something new, something it had not felt before.